BBL - New York

So I have been a slacker about updating this review. Mostly because me and my new ass have been out on the TOWN!

I look a lot better. But not how I'd imagine. My butt really isn't that big. It's a huge improvement from the flat ass I had before, but it's still pretty small. I know that I'm still swollen and in recovery, but I am not as thin as I'd like to be from the lipo either- particularly my belly and armpit areas. You cannot even tell I had my armpits done, as you can tell from the picture.

I can feel that my back rolls are at least 1/3 the size of what they were before, but they still bulge over my bra strap. (And not because my bra is too small).

I am the same weight as before the surgery, which is weird to me. I know that it makes sense, since I had the fat transferred and not just removed. But I barely ate anything for a week after the surgery, so I expected to at least shed a couple pounds. At least my face looks thinner.

Hopefully once I'm fully recovered I will be skinnier!

In terms of pain, I feel a LOT better, like 80% better. My stomach and sides are super tight feeling. But I do a lymphatic drainage self-massage everyday with cocoa butter, and that really helps.

I went to see a great lymphatic drainage masseuse, Nicole Psomas. She is super pricey ($250 first session) but she teaches you how to do self-massage and gives you a lot of good advice.

I knew that I was supposed to avoid salt and alcohol during the recovery, but I had been pretty bad about it. Well, Nicole reinforced that concept (and she had lipo herself), as well as continuing to wear a compression garment religiously, and since adhering to those bits of advice I can tell my recovery has improved a lot.

I bought a new compression garment (thank GOD.) It's a spanx, I got it in both black and pink/nude. (Pic of the pink one attached). It's SO much better and you can wear it under clothes without the neckline showing. You can wear your own bra with it too (or not, if you have small boobs. It gives you enough lift to go braless). You wouldn't be able to start off wearing this type of garment right away after surgery though, because it's really hard to get into. It would hurt so bad pulling this on during the first two weeks after surgery.

It has no ass hole, but has a crotch that comes undone with bra hooks. It's not easy to open and close to be honest. But the great part about this garment is that the back of it is high, so it provides compression for the area where I had my back flab removed.

I'm 9 days post-op and finally feel good enough to go out and resume a normal life. Friday was my post-op and the first time I ventured outside for longer than 15 minutes. It was intense- I had to take the subway to my appointment and it was packed. I almost passed out, felt so dizzy.

Getting my stitches out (11 incisions) was the most painful experience of my life. I really did not anticipate that. It hurt more than anything else in this whole process! I guess the difference is that it's sharp, shooting pain as opposed to more long-term, ongoing pain/discomfort from lipo recovery.

Most of my scars are minimal and look like they'll disappear entirely in a month or so, except for the two on the top part of my butt. One looks like it opened up again. And the one on my back where the bra strap closes is pretty bad, as anticipated. I don't really care though!

I am off the percocet/oxycodone and feel a lot better. My stomach is stiff and sometimes when I move I get sharp shooting pains in various areas. Particularly my left underarm, not sure what's up there. My butt doesn't hurt anymore.

The best part is that you can actually tell I have a new butt!

You can't really see the results of the lipo on my stomach, armpits or back yet because I'm still so swollen. But as you can see, the bruising has been rapidly disappearing! I still have bruising in the bikini area and cleavage but it's not too bad at all.

I had to take off the compression garment. Turns out it was too small for me. The first two days it was ok but I have swollen up a LOT since then and it just doesn't fit anymore. Last night I kept waking up in pain and this morning my right leg was all bruised. Weird since I didn't do anything to my legs. I realized the compression garment was blocking off circulation, so my doc advised me to take it off. On Fri I'll get it checked out. Meanwhile luckily I have a g-string shaper from Victoria Secret that I'm wearing instead and it is working well.

I was also worried because my new but was being squished through the crotch hole in the compression garment. I would be so upset if I recovered and had a weird extra butt or dents from the garment. And I couldn't close it or zip it up as easily.

I posted a question about this here on Real Self and a bunch of docs responded with helpful answers. Turns out that a lot of the garments run small. I bought a medium but it was too small. Before surgery I wore a size 4 or 6. Medium tops and small bottoms. I think the medium garment is really a small. I don't know yet if I'll have to get a new one. Sucks bc it was $240.

I am not doing so well today. I have been really pukey all day long. I think it's because I took my Cipro this morning almost on an empty stomach. I threw up a couple times, no fun. It hurts my abs so much to throw up, cough or laugh.

I am also so itchy. I put baby oil on after showering and that seemed to help a bit. Now massaging cortizone cream on, which is also helping... but I just read an article in the NYTimes about itching, and now it's a psychosomatic disaster with new itches springing up everywhere. I am worried about sleeping because percocet is giving me such bad dreams. I will probably have a dream about that 80s movie Hellraiser where the itchy mental patient peels off all her skin bc she thinks she's got bugs all over. Egggh.